The Jokes Diaryeea

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Niwa no niwa ni wa, niwa no niwatori wa niwaka ni wani wo tabeta

In linguistics, a "minimal pair" is a pair of words whose meanings are very different, but whose sounds are only slightly different, sometimes imperceptibly different to foreign ears. In Japanese, the sheer number of homophones are one of the reasons why kanji are used in addition to kana. One particularly famous sentence demonstrating this is pronounced "Niwa no niwa ni wa, niwa no niwatori wa niwaka ni wani wo tabeta," meaning "In Mr. Niwa's garden, two chickens suddenly ate an alligator."